The work of engineers, when properly applied, can have a compounding effect on the work of others…

Hyper-V

As part of virtualization on Hyper-V, there is the ability to use Para-virtualized drivers instead of using built-in drivers for slower, emulated devices. Para-virtualized drivers are simply device drivers that are written for native virtual devices. In other words they are not emulating a pre-existing physical device. The Path to Enlightenment is simply the method you use to take an operating system and enable it to use these synthetic devices.

In this article we will be describing the different methods of enabling enlightenment on Ubuntu Linux for the following 3 categories: Ubuntu 9.04 and Earlier, Ubuntu 9.10, and Ubuntu 10.04. Each of these distribution versions has significant differences which require sometimes slightly and sometimes major differences in procedure.

#1 All major Linux distributions will work out-of-box on Hyper-V By far one of the most common misconceptions is that Linux does not work on Hyper-V or that only a small number of distributions do. This could not be farther from the truth. Out-of-box most distributions will work. I personally…

When using a Core version of Hyper-V 2008 R2, be it Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Core, you are doing a good thing to conserve resources and minimize the attack footprint of your virtualization hosts. However this comes at a price. One of the most obvious misses in this matter is the enabling of Jumbo Frames on the Virtual Switch Interface. This enables your guests to reach out to storage directly using jumbo frames (mtu size of greater than 1500 bytes – however in this article we will be working specifically with 9000 bytes).

On March 31, 2010 Microsoft released the beta of version 2.1 of the Linux Integration Components. The Linux ICs allow Linux VMs running on Hyper-V to be “enlightened” and have access to synthetic device drivers which perform much faster than their emulated counter parts. It can be downloaded by registering for the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V on http://connect.microsoft.com

In this post I will be detailing the steps needed to compile a new kernel in Debian Linux 5. This particular case we are purpose building a kernel with the drivers necessary for Hyper-V Guests to take advantage of synthetic devices.

In this post I will be detailing the steps needed to compile a new kernel in Ubuntu Linux 9.10. This particular case we are purpose building a kernel with the drivers necessary for Hyper-V Guests to take advantage of synthetic devices.

In this article I am documenting the process for installing the Hyper-V Integration Components (v2) within a Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3 VM. My environment consists of x64 VMs, I have not taken the time to test this process for x86 VMs, however it should hold true, as long as you update the package names to reflect the appropriate architecture.

In this article I am documenting the process for installing the Hyper-V Integration Components within a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 or a CentOS 5.3 VM. My environment consists of x64 VMs, I have not taken the time to test this process for x86 VMs, however it should hold true, as long as you update the package names to reflect the appropriate architecture.

This is a follow-up article which will allow you to get mouse control within the Guest OS without having to ‘capture’ your mouse. Now generally this is not necessary, since Linux in the Datacenter is generally without a GUI, however I use Hyper-V on my Laptop and have a Linux Desktop Guest which this makes it helpful for.

In this article I am documenting the process for installing the Hyper-V Integration Components within a Ubuntu or Debian VM. I am specifically writing this for Ubuntu 8.04.2 and Debian 5, however I have additionally confirmed that this process works on both Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04. My environment consists of x64 VMs, I have not taken the time to test this process for x86 VMs, however it should hold true, as long as you update the package names to reflect the appropriate architecture.